Apathetic Gratitude
by Public Valentine
Summary: The mask was unused for nearly three years. It was in stores for the first year, and now thousands of its copies sat in the back, collecting dust. The hero gave up. Somebody else wanted to give it a try and ended up in a dumpster. Hero for sale? Hardly.


**Apathetic Gratitude**

_Here's an angsty-ish scene I was going to put in the next chapter, but figured it''d be too out of tone with the last. Too sudden. Still the same universe of the Web of the Other and TSTCIFTC, just a deleted scene not fit to be in the main story. Sheds a little light on Peter's mindset after he gets back from where ever he's been._

_Enjoy._

* * *

><p>Unsavory, Peter Parker? That was up for interpretation at that moment. Annoyed, impatient, troublesome? He reserved judgment. Tired? At the moment, he felt energetic, ready to run a lap around the entire island and then run back to Queens.<p>

Peter looked at his phone. _5:11AM. Saturday._

He hadn't slept. With his wrist being the way it was, he could never hope to get enough sleep before he would have to leave. He had sat on the couch for a good three hours doing nothing but press buttons on his phone. He had memorized every function of it already. He had added some of his own moths ago. He even found a way to get a better signal on it with a hack, a way to cool the heat by reducing the power considerably, and a way to keep it cold by just sitting it in a batch of webbing. In the time that he had been awake, he touched all of those up and more. Granted, he had no lab there, at the mansion of the world (in)famous X-Men, but he had his phone which was just as good.

_One-hundred eighteen, one-hundred seventeen, one-hundred sixteen...  
><em>

He had looked up the Avengers and, after closing his phone for five minutes in disbelief, turned it back on and adjusted the sound, text messaging, video capabilities, and power settings four three or so hours.

Jessica hadn't answered her phone in he didn't know how long. She was doing whatever she was doing and he, for the past two years he had been _gone_. In Russia. In that time, things had changed, so many things had changed, but apparently Fury had kept some things from him with his bi-annual shakedown on his current location with his SHIELD lackies, the most recent of which ended with Natasha being sent back to the states in the cargo bay, an experience he had been eager to share with her after doing it himself before he left.

Fortunately, she had been asleep. Unconscious, to be specific, with her arms and legs just a bit disabled with a pressure of two tons, give or take; she could breath, he was sure of that, and she would have been awake when they found her in the bay, just about. The only downside was that she wouldn't be able to move.

_Eighty three, eighty two, eighty one, eighty._

To the point, Jessica had been with the Avengers a few months back. He hadn't bothered to check the date of the blog post, or even the thousands of search results on Google. It was a big-time superhero fight, the Ultimates were there. Nick Fury had been there. The X-Men had- Logan was there. They had all been congratulated, and then apparently good ol' Jess, ever the conversationalist, had been asked _who_ she was, why she was more agile than a gymnast cat and shot webs from her fingertips and why she wouldn't shut up with the jokes, and why she had a spider on her chest. Jessica, his clone Jessica, ever the conversationalist, had _stuttered_, joked, and said, "I'm his sister," before leaving.

He blankly stared at his phone for a second and after three more, threw it lazily, away from him, only to retrieve it with a web-line when it hit the peak of its height.  
>Jessica, ever the conversationalist, had been called an imposter.<p>

He chuckled. He chuckled, and then he laughed. Then he started to cackle until his wrist throbbed and he stopped with a wince. He hadn't been able to help himself. There had been a lot of results for his name alone- _spider_ led to Spider-Man, which led to mutant, then freak, then hero, then gone, and then dead. Then there was _Spider-Man – Imposter_. He widened his eyes for effect, waving his hands whimsically in the air with a far off smile. It _sounded_ like a play, but it was actually pretty, kind of, sort of, somewhat funny.

Then it wasn't. He looked at his phone, at Jessica's last known number and his face became blank. There had been a lot of results for _Spider-Man – gone ,_ alone, only it had taken about a year for people to realize that he was gone, and by that time he wwas already in Russia, thinking about leaving Russia, and then resigning to stay in Russia. He could recall how they used to criticize Spider-Man for interfering with actual heroes; the Ultimates, the X-Men, the police and the Army. How they said that the Army could have handled the Hulk alone and didn't need his help, which was hilarious. After he had left, things had changed. Things had changed and people were wondering where he had gone and-

His good mood, approximately four hours old, died young.

Spider-Man – Gone.

Spider-Man – Imposter.

Spider-Man – Dead.

Apparently an imposter of Spider-Man appeared months after he left. People didn't notice the difference. Then, the imposter disappeared. They found his body in a dumpster a few months later, exactly a year after he left. Broken legs, broken arms, beat up, and a bullet in the head, said the police reports he had so conveniently accessed. He was wearing a costume he bought from a Halloween store, because around the time he had first appeared, it was Halloween. It was all over the news; Spider-Man – Dead, Spider-Man is an Imposter, Imposter of Spider-Man found dead in a dumpster in Queens, New York. They cancelled the costumes, they cancelled the merchandise, and an angry mother sued the Kingpin for her dead son.

So while he was gone, people who had never liked him anyway decided to pick up the costume that had been ripped off of him from a costume store and parade around the city just like him. They stopped a few muggings without a fight, going on just his previously established reputation alone. They managed to scrape by in another sighting, covered up uselessly by Fury, in a gunfight. They used the dumpster as cover and blew up a car. No casualties, the only injury being a rock to the head on one of the shooters. Then they died.

He wondered if it was his fault for an hour or two.

He had answered his own question. "No." It wasn't.

He had been, and for all intents and purposes, was _still_ gone. He hadn't asked anybody to take up a responsibility he had never asked for, only one that he could handle. They did it for the fame, he told himself. They did it because they wanted to be the famous vigilante with no side on a coin but the edge, so to speak. They had done it for all the wrong reasons, and then... they died.

A quick extensive search later showed that a witness came forth. The interview was covered by SHIELD, but more importantly, Nick Fury. He'd have to _thank_ him for that at some point, but his attention, as erratic as it had been two hours ago, had been focused on the report of the interview itself. Apparently, no, definitely, the imposter died saving a family from a bunch of guys with guns. The typical type with tattoos, the ones bound to do jail time at some point in the near future. The imposter saved the family and killed some of the gun totting idiots too.

And he died after they got their hands on him.

For some reason he just couldn't seem to get his mind off that part. Kind of like that bullet that was reported to be lodged right between the eyes. He had seen that a lot, lately.

So he was Peter Parker, the _actual_ Spider-Man. He hadn't called himself that in an amazing amount of months and he wouldn't make a joke about it. They just weren't that funny. He could see himself sitting in the same place, trying to figure out what to say, but he wouldn't feel guilty. It wasn't his fault, none of it was. He had tried to be a hero and he got labeled a villain, a menace. Some guy dresses up like him and tries to be the vigilante, the menace, and he gets dead.

So what exactly was he supposed to say?

"Thanks dead guy."?

It was difficult to admit, hard and annoying to bring up, to think about, much less face the facts, but that sentence was reserved to somebody else who's death was _actually_ his fault, and he would be reminded of them each time he looked at the mask he hadn't worn in years, not the faceless civilian who died being a hero. He could deal with that. He wouldn't be guilty, nor would he be responsible for their actions.

If all it took for somebody to be a hero was for somebody else to die... No, he had seen that too much either. When somebody said don't be a hero, it wouldn't prudent to listen, lest another someone ends up in a dumpster and some other idiot pops up to take their place.

_Three, two, one, zero._


End file.
